


Think of the Trees

by McBangle



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Don't Try This At Home, Flying Nutella, Frequent misuse of trees, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, M/M, Pre-Derek "Nursey" Nurse/William "Dex" Poindexter, questionable decisions after 12 am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 16:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14382105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McBangle/pseuds/McBangle
Summary: Even experienced tree climbers like Derek occasionally get caught up in the climb and lose track of how high they've gotten. And doesn't everybody occasionally make bad decisions after midnight?Wherein sometimes, your friends are around to chirp you at the most annoying times. And sometimes, they're right where you want them to be.





	Think of the Trees

Derek is eating lunch in the branches of his favorite tree on Lake Quad when it happens. A glob of Nutella drips out of the far edge of his sandwich just as he bites into it. He lunges after it but has to stop and brace himself nearly immediately when the branches beneath him sway dangerously.

He closes his eyes and takes three calming breaths, centering himself before taking stock of the situation. He’s a trained tree climber and he knows better than to make sudden movements when he’s this high up.

The problem is, he didn’t follow his training when he climbed this tree today. He’d been caught up in the thrill of the climb and the view from the top and had forgotten that the campus trees are much smaller – and less sturdy – than the trees he's used to climbing. He’d climbed too high and perched himself on branches too narrow to support his weight.

He looks about for a foothold for his descent, but his eyes are drawn to a familiar flash of orange below him. That’s when he sees where his Nutella had landed. Square on the back of one William Poindexter’s neck. He can only imagine the look on Dex’s face as he pulls his hand away from his neck and examines the brown, sticky substance that had fallen on him.

“It’s Nutella,” Derek explains. “Sorry, man.”

Dex cranes his neck to look up at Derek. At first, he looks shocked and confused, but it doesn’t take long for his lips to purse into that old familiar scowl – silently judging Derek, no doubt. “Nurse? What in the hell are you doing up there?”

If Dex weren’t here – if it were some random stranger or if Derek were by himself – he would already be climbing down. But he can’t help it; Dex always seems to bring out an urge to be stubbornly, almost competitively chill. So, he simply shrugs nonchalantly. “Eating a sandwich. Sorry it dripped on you, bro.”

“I can see that, but what are you doing _up there?”_ And there’s the judgment he’d been expecting.

Derek theatrically stretches out in the tree while actually bracing his back against the trunk and surreptitiously hooking his right ankle around a nearby branch. “I like to eat my lunch in the trees. I feel connected to nature this way, and the ideas really flow for my writing.” Despite his best efforts to steady himself, the branch beneath Derek’s left leg bows treacherously. It’s definitely time to start climbing down.

Dex pulls a face. “That is _not_ a climbing tree. In fact, I’m almost positive the student manual says not to climb the trees in the quads.”

“Pfft!” Derek scoffs, feeling out with his right foot for a sturdy-enough branch beneath him. “Who reads the student manual?”

“They’re not weight bearing limbs,” Dex argues. “You’re going to fall and break your neck.”

Derek resists the urge to roll his eyes at Dex’s attempt at lecturing him about tree climbing. Instead, he goes for the easy chirp. “Aw, Poindexter, you do care.”

Even through the branches between them, Derek can see Dex flush bright red. “I just don’t want you to scratch and cost us a game,” Dex mutters. “Get down from there. Please.” Derek is surprised by how quiet and sincere the last word sounds.

He picks his way down as quickly as he can, leaping the last few feet when he’s within safe jumping range. “It’s chill, Dex.” He smirks and ruffles Dex’s hair in way that he knows infuriates him. “You don’t have to admit that you worry about me if it embarrasses you.”

Dex brushes his hand away and mutters something about being late to class before stalking off.

_X_

Derek wasn’t lying when he’d told Dex that he feels closer to nature when he’s sitting in trees. He’d begged his parents to take him to the Bronx Zoo Treetop Adventure as soon as he’d been old enough, and had spent most of his childhood either on ropes courses or illegally perching in Central Park trees. There’s nothing like the feeling he gets when he’s climbing high above the heads of the folks stuck on the ground. He feels freer nestled in the branches of a tree; like he can leave all of his stresses behind and just… be.

And yet, of course, every time Dex sees him up a tree, he yammers on about tensile strength and misusing trees. Ugh. He clearly thinks Derek doesn’t know the first thing about tree climbing. Dex is exactly the kind of country boy who probably thinks there aren’t any trees in New York City. He’s constantly demanding that Derek “get down from that tree this instant,” like some kind of schoolmarm. It’s so beyond obnoxious.

And yet…

Don’t get him wrong, it _is_ obnoxious. And patronizing. And frankly insulting that Dex thinks he knows more about trees than Derek does.

But so sue him, it’s _fun_ to needle Dex. Derek enjoys the way the tips of his ears turn pink when he gets agitated. And the way the pink spreads over his entire face when Derek points his agitation out to him.

And while Dex approaches the whole tree-climbing topic with way too much bluster and condescension, Derek is pretty sure Dex is actually worried about him. Which is ridiculous and misplaced but, well, sort of sweet too. So he lets it go even as he chirps him about it.

_X_

Derek lounges on the Reading Room, his shoulder just barely brushing against Dex’s in the lounge chair next to his. It’s been a good night, the kind he’d envisioned in his Andover days when he had imagined what college would be like: a couple of beers, a couple of joints, and a lot of deep conversation.

He’s been watching Dex watch the stars for – well, he’s not sure for how long. It’s nice, actually. He never sees him looking this open and at peace with the world. He knows everyone thinks that he and Dex are constantly at each other’s throats, but when Dex isn’t trying so hard to control everything and he’s just living life, they vibe together unlike anyone else he’s ever known. There’s a reason why they’re paired together on-ice.

Part of him would like to keep Dex just like this for always, but part of him wants to do something that would shock Dex just to see his reaction. It’s after midnight, nearly one o’clock; the traditional time for the kinds of wild, reckless decisions that he’ll tell stories about for the rest of his life.

A warm feeling spreads across Derek’s chest when Dex turns his head to smile back at him. “Hey,” Derek begins.

“Hey,” Dex replies. There’s something in the way Dex looks at him that, if he let himself get caught up in it, would keep him from trying what he wants to try. But there’s a plan taking shape in his mind and he doesn’t want to get distracted, so he pushes other thoughts away and keeps on talking.

“I’ll bet if I jumped from here, I could land on that tree.” He points to the Haus tree just a few feet away.

Dex snorts and rolls his eyes, but he still looks soft and lazy, like it's just another idle late-night conversation. “I’ll bet you couldn’t.”

“All right.” Derek stands up, wiping his palms on his jeans. “Let’s do this.”

“Wait? What?” Dex sits bolts upright. _There’s_ the reaction Derek was looking for. “Are you serious right now? I was joking.”

_No shit,_ Derek thinks. But it’s not just about winning a dare or getting a reaction. As soon as he had thought of jumping for it, he knew he had to try it. If he doesn’t jump tonight, then it’ll keep niggling at the back of his mind until he does.

He’s positive he can make it. He’s a good jumper, and it wouldn’t even be that far; the tips of the tree’s branches are nearly close enough to touch from the edge of the roof. It’s not enough for him to believe he could make it; he wants to confirm it. He wants the bragging rights. He wants the _experience_. After all, isn’t college all about making new experiences?

Derek rubs his hands together and gets into a low crouch at the edge of the Reading Room. “Yeah, man, I want to see if I can make it.”

Dex’s voice carries from behind him. “This is crazy. You will die.” He sounds disturbingly certain of this.

Derek simply shakes his head and shrugs. “I’ve made smaller jumps.” His mind is racing and his blood is pumping and he knows he can make it. He knows it. So, before he can think about the danger, he just goes for it.

He leaps up and out instead of straight ahead, and for a glorious moment he feels like he’s broken free of gravity and could fly off to the clouds if he wanted to. He lets loose a yelp, bicycling his legs in the air. It’s a rush greater than anything he’s ever felt before.

But then he’s hurtling into branches, scraping at his arms and threatening to poke him in the eye. For the first time since the idea occurred to him, he questions whether leaping into a tree from the roof of the porch was a smart idea. His chest and arms slam into a branch. His lower body keeps swinging forward but he hugs onto that branch for dear life. He pushes one foot off the trunk at the peak of his forward arc, penduluming backwards until he slows to a stop.

It takes less than a second for the terror to wear off. A heartbeat. A blink of an eye for it to hit him that he did it. He motherfucking did it! “Yes! Yes!” he whoops. “Did you see that? Did! You! _See_ that?” He is invincible; he can do anything he wants, conquer any challenge. Nothing could stop him.

He doesn’t feel the branch snap beneath him until he’s already falling.

It happens so fast: one moment he’s dangling off a (in retrospect, far too narrow) upper branch, the next he crashes onto a larger lower branch. He instinctively doubles over to wrap his entire body around the tree branch, shaking uncontrollably. “Holy fuck.”

From somewhere behind him, he hears Dex shout “Holy shit!” and then a whole lot of scrambling. The next time Dex speaks, his voice comes from somewhere beneath Derek. “Are you OK?”

Derek still hasn’t moved an inch in however much time it took Dex to get down off the Reading Room. His head is still spinning and his heart rate has barely slowed. “I’m OK,” he squeaks, sounding a lot less brave than he’d intended. “Just scared,” he admits. “And sore. I’m probably going to have a massive bruise on my ass.”

He takes a deep breath and begins inching toward the trunk where the branches are thickest and most stable. He sucks in a breath as the coarse bark bites into the scratches on his hands and forearms. “And, OK, scratched up, too.” Finally, he reaches the trunk and gingerly climbs down the remaining branches. 

As soon as his feet touch ground, he turns around and collapses against the trunk, slowly sinking to the ground.

Dex hovers nearby. “Can I help?”

“Nah, I got it.” Derek winces as sits down. “That’s going to hurt for a while.” He’s going to need at least a few minutes to stop the shakes before he can try to stand.

Dex sits down to his right, still hovering anxiously. “Is there anything I can do?”  

Derek slumps against Dex’s side, shakily resting his head on his shoulder. “If I ever think about jumping off a roof again, remind me what just happened.”

Dex laughs. “I think I can handle that.” Derek’s heart thrills as Dex's fingers lace with his.

“That was a bad decision,” Derek admits. “I usually make better decisions than that.”

“I know you do,” Dex agrees.

“No, I need you to know that.” Derek lifts his head to look at Dex. “I don’t think you believe me on that, and it’s important to me that you do.”

“I do,” Dex assures Derek, gazing back at him. “I just worry about you. Maybe irrationally sometimes, I just…” he breaks off, flushing a deep red.

“Yeah, well, maybe worrying about me jumping off the roof was rational,” Derek laughs, running his free hand across the back of his neck. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to take a break from jumping off roofs. I’m thinking that sitting under trees might be more my speed at the moment.”

“It beats falling out of trees,” Dex helpfully points out.

“That’s true,” Derek chuckles dryly. He’s still sore from getting the wind knocked out of him in that fall, but he’s not about to admit that.

“I might join you sometime,” Dex offers tentatively. “I mean, if you… don’t…”

Derek rests his head comfortably against Dex’s again. “I think I can find room for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously though, do me a favor and please don't jump off of any roofs!!!
> 
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